1. Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with exemplary embodiments relate to registering medical images of different modalities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to advancement in medical technologies, medical images having a high resolution may be obtained. With emergence of medical devices utilizing micromanipulation, a technique for treating a living body without direct incision for exposing a portion to be treated is being developed. The technique involves cutting a hole to a minimum size on a living body and inserting a catheter or a medical needle into a blood vessel or other desired portion of the living body while observing the interior regions of the living body by using medical imaging equipment. This method is called an image-guided surgery or an interventional surgical procedure.
According to the above method, an operator may identify positions of organs or lesions by using images. Furthermore, while performing an operation, an operator detects changes in positions of organs associated with a patient's respiration or movement. Thus, the operator needs to accurately and quickly detect a patient's respiration or movement based on real-time ultrasound images in order to perform an operation. However, it may be difficult to identify the shapes of organs and lesions in the real-time ultrasound images with a naked eye.
Unlike ultrasound images, magnetic resonance (MR) images or computed tomography (CT) images may be used to clearly distinguish organs and lesions. However, since magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or CT equipment is not able to acquire images in real-time, a patient's respiration or movement that occurs during a medical procedure cannot be detected in MR or CT images.
Thus, there is a need to register a medical image captured in real-time in association with a medical image of a different modality from that of the real-time image. In order to register a plurality of medical images of different modalities, feature points extracted from each medical image may be used. However, according to this method, image registration may be difficult due to the inadequate quality of medical images.